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I wasn’t in this episode. I also haven’t watched the episode. And I barely remember this part of the game. So I have nothing to say about these events. Let’s just watch it together and ponder how it’s still more fun to watch this game than to actually play The Old Republic.
Programming Vexations

Here is a 13 part series where I talk about programming games, programming languages, and programming problems.
Philosophy of Moderation

The comments on most sites are a sewer of hate, because we're moderating with the wrong goals in mind.
Patreon!

Why Google sucks, and what made me switch to crowdfunding for this site.
D&D Campaign

WAY back in 2005, I wrote about a D&D campaign I was running. The campaign is still there, in the bottom-most strata of the archives.
Mass Effect Retrospective

A novel-sized analysis of the Mass Effect series that explains where it all went wrong. Spoiler: It was long before the ending.
You guys didn’t go with Jolee Bindo for the rescue? He’s the coolest breakout of the bunch.
Jedi changing bulbs, lights of the Old Republic.
Jedi writing scholarly literature, cites of the Old Republic.
Jedi climbing mountains, heights of the Old Republic.
Jedi on a sightseeing cruise, sites of the Old Republic.
Edit: Hmm.. Meant to post this downstream one comment. Whoops?
Without any further context, this would be hilarious.
Jedi get kinky, bites of the old republic
Jedi get sleepy, nights of the old republic
Jedi on a windy day, kites of the old republic
Jedi get aggressive, fights of the old republic
Jedi join the Merry Men, Tights of the Old Republic.
Jedi didn’t clean the fridge, Frights of the Moldy Food Brick.
Jedi without lighstabers, Knives of the Old Republic;
Jedi deal with moral dilemmas, Gripes of the Old Republic;
Jedi being dishonest or of lower social standing, Knaves of the Old Republic;
I won’t be able to watch the episode until I’m back home from work and I have no idea what we’re doingJedi playing instruments, notes of the Old Republic.
Jedi being offal, tripe of the Old Republic.
Jedi exploring caves, stalactites of the Old Republic.
Jedi pondering the lack of wood furniture,termites of the old republic
Jedi investigate trees dying on kashyyyk,blights of the old republic
Jedi find a computer virus,bytes of the old republic
I have watched the whole episode,and I still have no idea what were doing.
Jedi forget to vacuum, mites of the old republic.
Jedi killed in a violent act of hatred, wights of the old republic.
Jedi at a funeral, rites of the Old Republic;
Jedi historian, writes of the Old Republic;
Jedi NuEconomist, writes off the Old Republic
…
Jedi content takedown notice, rights of the Old Republic;
Jedi standup comedian, nights of the repo’ed pun brick?
Jedi using outdated tech slang. Writes of the Old ePublic
I really dont get the point of games getting a rating based on what you can mod them to be.Thats like saying that a movie needs to be rated R because you can film over parts of them with a sex tape.
IIRC you could fire up the mod kit on the disk and disable the underwear trivially, so it’s not like with Hot Coffee where it was a major hack with external tools to get it running. It’s more like penalising a game with free camera movement because you can look up skirts, which is at least a more nuanced if still silly. The main problem is putting an age on the content, rather than just having a content warning list and letting grown-ups decide.
this is why PEGI is better then the ERSB, yes they have age brackets, but they also have content advisorys on the box so you can show the parent whats in the game and why its a 16-18 whatever
That’s the way the ESRB crumbles – they rate based on what’s in the game, even if its not and not intended to be, accessible to the player.
Its why Oblivion got shit on because the models were nude and the underwear was an added mesh and their later games get a pass on that because the underwear is *part* of the model – even though modders can (and have) create explicit pornography in-game. But its not *included* in what’s sent in for rating so it doesn’t count.
Like the CBO rates Congressional budget plans based on what Congress says their laws are *intended* to do and completely ignore how these things play out in real life.
As a former CBO staffer, I take mild, non-threatening umbrage at your remarks. CBO produces budget deficit forecasts under a range of economic scenarios. When I was there, Congress’ economic assumptions were known internally as the “rosy scenario” and not taken seriously at all by anyone in the agency. I mean, there were skits at the office Christmas party with the phrase “rosy scenario” as the punchline.
Still, a man’s gotta do what a man’s obligated by Federal law to do.
Don’t take umbrage – the complaint here is less that the CBO discharged their duty fairly impartially and more that because of that requirement they end up putting out bad data. Its completely faithful to the inputs, but GIGO.
In a similar manner, the ESRB rates what’s going to be handed out to the public by the developer – that’s all they rate and they ignore the fact that any game than can be modded will have tits in it at some point.
I’ll admit, I first thought your decision to have Canderous save the crew was a bit hasty, thinking that there may have been better options among the rest of the party, but then 16:41 happened and, well…I realized you had made the right choice.
Still, it’s nice that every crew member gets their own special sequence for breaking out. Mission’s is hilarious, Jolee’s even more so. T3 gets a special puzzle that he has to solve, and Juhani has to deal with extra security (to compensate for the fact that she’s able to keep all her gear from the get go).
Saul Karath loves the Milgram Experiment.
And ignored every subsequent development in social psychology, I’m sure.
Like the people who still look at the Stanford Prison Experiment and go ‘whoa, man, that’s deep.’
Out of curiousity, what kind of developments are you talking about? Or at least, what should I google to learn more?
Googling the names of those experiments should do you fine, but the short version is that both Milgram and the Stanford Prison were famously unethical psychology experiments which non-psychologists keep talking about because the results were really dramatic. Neither of them produced data which could be potentially useful — partially because of the ethical failings, and partially because the ethical failings led directly to flaws in the methodology. For example, in both cases, the scientist in charge of the experiment took direct charge of it and became an “actor” in their role, colouring both the objective and subjective results towards their predefined views — this is a failure of both scientific ethics and scientific method.
This is the mission that can break the game several hours later without notice. If you play this one as Mission and end her mission (heh) while still stealthed — which is easy to do since it ends suddenly — the game will get permanently stuck during dialog and you’ll need a pre-Leviathan save to recover. Later, Mission is supposed to deliver a line in a group conversation, but if she’s still stealthed she can’t, so it will get stuck. I got bit by this hard (Xbox) and nearly had to start the whole game over my first time through.
Neverwinter Nights was trash.
Real, honest, earnest trash.
Hordes of the Underdark was pretty cool, though.
As someone who lost literal years to the NWN1 online scene, yeah, it was pretty much trash out of the box. What made – makes, there are still active servers – it wonderful is the toolset and what a dedicated modder can do with it.
The thing is – NWN was intended modding toolset only. That *story* that comes with it, horrible as it is, is really just a demo of what you could do with the toolset. You were never expected to think *that* was the game, only to showcase what the engine and tools could allow you to do in your own games.
And tons of really good mods showed how well it worked.
NWN2 also showed that the vast majority of people never understood that – they played *that* horrible campaign and then left, never to return.
So did I, but oh man is it SO SLOW. BG2 combats play out much faster… yes, part of it is the 3.0 problem of HP bloat, but a lot of NWN’s problem was the interface and action speed. I don’t want to wait a minute just to run down one stupid hallway.
Poor Shadows of Undrentide. Don’t worry, little expansion pack. I still love you, even if no one else does.
Knights of the Old Republic is extremely similar to the original campaign from Neverwinter Nights. Travel from hub to zone. Obtain plot coupon. Repeat until all plot coupons obtained. Travel to final zone. Kill boss. Both games feature powerful female NPCs who turn evil; Aribeth in Neverwinter Nights and Bastila in Knights of the Old Republic. Both games have companion characters who reveal their backstory to you in conversation after you level up.
The important differences between the two games are that Knights of the Old Republic (i) is smaller, shorter, and much less likely to wear out its welcome and (ii) has much better story-telling. Neverwinter Nights had three successive hubs, each with its associated zones and plot coupons. Unfortunately, few of those zones had much in the way of story, atmosphere, or world-building. Knights of the Old Republic has just the one set of zones and plot coupons and much, much more emphasis on story.
My hypothesis is that Knights of the Old Republic has a much better story than Neverwinter Nights because it was designed as a strictly single-player game. The Neverwinter Nights campaign, on the other hand, was designed to accomodate co-op play so that little things like the “twist” in Knights of the Old Republic just weren’t possible.
KOTOR also doesn’t have those damn doors.
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=945
Is NWN2’s plot door but the first one had them also.
I’m sure that there must have been some invincible plot doors in NWN, but I no longer remember where they may have been.
The thing that I most appreciated about the campaign was that you could get various plot coupons in the second act from certain scripted events and didn’t need to clear every single zone. It’s too bad that the third act reverted to “nope, go clear all the zones” again.
Yeah, NWN is basically where Bioware pioneered the “Bioware plot structure” that they became famous for in later games, though it got refined and simplified when they shifted to making games for console first. Every game they produced beginning with NWN until ME2 followed that general shape, often even recapitulating particular story beats.
i just noticed one of the guards who captures the crew was the voice of Loghain, and now i cannot unhear him.
What, he’s trying to manipulate us into doing what he wants, and he tortures… Carth? Yeah, right, because we care about Carth’s well-being. What will you do next, torture us by playing lullabies?
What the hell, guys? You let Mumbles stampede you through a no return gate and you didn’t complete HK’s story first. Now it’s too late. It’s going to skip to the end and you won’t get the middle. Or the regen upgrades that make his inability to be force healed less of a pain.